Rest, Relax, and Reset With a CEO Retreat: Our Tulum Retreat Recap

I’m fresh off the plane from my latest retreat. Over the last five years, I’ve done a couple of these for female small business owners. During the retreats, we talk about sales, marketing, and planning.

This year, though, I went international! We were in Tulum, Mexico, stayed in an absolutely gorgeous house, and enjoyed relaxation to the hilt. In this episode, I recap that weekend and discuss what the retreat was all about.

3:13 - The goal of the retreat and where radiance really comes from

5:31 - Why suffering is always a choice and how it can help you

8:47 - An alternative solution if you don’t have the opportunity to go on a retreat like this

Find me on Instagram or LinkedIn or email me at hello@lesliedlyons.com.

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Transcript for Rest, Relax, and Reset With a CEO Retreat: Our Tulum Retreat Recap

Hey boss, I am Leslie Lyons, your embodied leadership and sales coach, and this is Pleasurable Profits. This podcast is ideal for owners and leaders of tattoo shops, permanent makeup studios, cannabis businesses, movement studios, sex toy shops, and other industries that are too often left out of the leadership conversation. If you’re looking for a woo meets strategy approach to defining your strengths and values, designing a business that supports you, and creating a soul-driven, and of course, pleasurable plan for profitability, then let’s get started.

What's up, party people? How y'all doing? I'm doing great. Thank you for asking. You guys are always so polite. I appreciate it. I just am fresh off a plane—why really fresh off a plane? It's been about a week now—from my first international retreat. Now I have done a couple of local retreats over the last five years. The very first one I did was in New Orleans. The second one I did was here in Chicago, my hometown. This is now my third. I call them retreats. I call them summits. I call them extended intensives.

I have all types of names for it. But really the goal is to get female small-business owners together to talk about sales, marketing, and planning. This year, I did it internationally. Your girl was coming up and we went to Tulum, one of my favorite spots in Mexico because it is still the jungle. There's a lot of greenery, there's a lot of lushness to it. It is not as commercial as Cancun, Playa Del Carmen, or Cabo, but it's getting there. I feel like this last trip there was not the same as even the last time I was in Tulum, which was two years ago.

I've been in Mexico every year. Child, I’m always in Mexico. But the last time I had been to Tulum was two years ago. It's definitely not the same place. There's a lot of building going on. It's losing its jungle appeal. It's losing the nature appeal that Tulum is known for. It’s definitely becoming Baby Cancun. But that's neither here nor there.

I rented an amazing house. Oh my gosh, I'm going to link to videos on my Instagram page so that you can look at it and see. The place that we stayed in was absolutely gorgeous. I think it had six or seven bedrooms, I can't remember now, equal number of bathrooms, and had two pools. I mean, it was just relaxation to the tilt. That was really my goal when I put this together.

If you're thinking about doing a retreat for your business as a way to bring your customers together for deeper work, something to be thinking about is what is the goal of the retreat. For this one, in particular, I did want us to plan for 2023. But I also want to make sure that they had time to rest, really rest because as a small-business owner, we always got something going on and I really don't feel like we get adequate rest. That's just the truth.

I wanted to hold a container for exploration but also take a nap if you need it. I didn't want to jam-pack the day with, ”Oh, let's go to Cenote days. Let's do this. Let's do that.” It's like, “Yeah, we could do some sightseeing. But the big thing is get rest, thin, relax by the pool, tan.” I had massages. We brought in private chefs. We had nourishing food. It was such a beautiful time in terms of the space that we were in.

One of the big takeaways for me was the theme for the retreat. The theme for my retreat was radiance and rest. Radiance is actually something that I've been studying. It is the magic that leaders have, the ability to shine so brightly that people are attracted to you. I wanted to talk about how that light comes about. That's what I wanted to focus on with my clients was that radiance often comes from suffering.

Stay with me here, follow the bouncing ball here. Some of the brightest people you know, some of the people who are the most positive who have the best outlooks on life, get that person in your mind. Think about that person. You feel like they're always so resourceful. They're always so positive. They come up with solutions quickly, those sorts of things. I bet if you really sat down and got to know that person, you'd find that that person has overcome a lot in their lives. They've been through a lot of suffering.

But suffering is always a choice. Bad sh*t happening happens to everyone. That is a part of the human experience. But suffering itself is a choice. Meaning that you get to choose how you feel about situations but none of us escape pain. What we explored on this trip was how can we optimize and how can we turn our suffering into something beautiful. I'm not talking about toxic positivity where we pretend to be happy when we're not. That is not authentic, that is not embodied, which you know is the heart of what I do. That's not real.

I would never advocate for somebody to do some type of Spiritual bypassing if you will, and pretend to be happy when they're not. What I wanted to offer clients and what I'm offering you today is to look at the rocks that are thrown at you at life, the pitfalls, the hangups, and the obstacles. If you look at those through the lens of “What am I needing to learn from this, and how can I take my pain and turn that into fuel?” when you commit to taking pain in life, disappointments in life, and learning from them, and then more importantly, using those sufferings as fuel, that is going to light you up. It is going to show you that you're capable of overcoming anything, that you always land on your feet.

When you believe that, that's when you radiate out and other people start saying, “How does she make it through her mom's death like that? How did she make it through bankruptcy? How does she make it through a previous failed marriage? How does she make it through?” People start asking those types of questions because they're like, “Wow, not only did you survive, but you thrived.” That's what the focus of the retreat was.

We explored things like what have we suffered in the past? What are we doing? Are there shadow places that we're still operating in that we need to put some light on so that we can move forward? What does it look like to live a radiant full life before your team? How do you cultivate radiance in people who report to you? That was the focus, like, I want to be an attractive leader. I'm not talking about physical attraction. I want people who are drawn to me. I want magnetism. I want radiance.

I want people to see me from afar and say, “I'll have what she's having.” That was the thing. I want to offer you to just be thinking about what is your theme for the year. If you didn't have an opportunity to go on a beautiful retreat like the CEO reset weekend that I had, you can make a retreat at your home, you can rent a hotel. That's something I do every quarter. Give me a nice little fancy hotel too, because I'm a bougie b*tch. I like to feel affluent. I don't hide that. I don't try and pretend that I don't.

I'm not the richest person in the world but, child, I do believe in living. So I give me a little swanky hotel at the Four Seasons Ritz, wherever I feel like I want to go, where I can feel affluent, opulent, expensive, abundant. I can pick up so many adjectives to describe how I’d feel. But it helps me get into the mind space of what do I really desire for the new year. Get your hotel room and sit and say what is my word? What is my principle? What's going to be my guiding principle?

That's different than values and principles that we talk about in our business every day. We're talking about a guiding principle for the year. Where are you going to put your attention, where are you going to put your focus? I'd love to hear what you're going to be focusing on. One word, a phrase, whatever it's going to be. But I want to encourage you to focus on what you want to have in 2023.

Focus on how you want to feel, how you want to show up, the type of leader that you want to be because when you declare it, the universe has a way of conspiring to make sure that that comes about. You start aligning your actions up, you start looking for places where that word is manifest and present, and where you get proof that this thing is actually working for you.

Hit me back. I want to know what your word is. I want to know what it's about. Maybe I'll see you next year, next January. I don't know where we're going to go, but it'll be someplace warm. It will definitely be someplace that's luxury filled, and it will definitely be a space where you can process and plan for a year that will be one of the most prosperous years ever.

I hope to see you at the next retreat, but I'd love to hear from you about what's going to be your guiding principle for 2023. Hit me back. You know how to reach me. IG @lesliedlyons. Alright, my loves. Until next time. You be well. Grace and peace.